August 10, 2011

You've heard it all before

My father likes books, so each Christmas, I buy him a book or two he might not otherwise get. This past Christmas, I got him The Facts on File Dictionary of Clichés. He watches a lot of CNN and MSNBC with occasional forays to Fox News. He’s started keeping a notebook near the TV to observe the ones he hears. It’s mostly stuff you’ve all heard before, but with occasional retired person’s thoughts thrown in. By the middle, I started laughing and thought I’d share:

We are kicking the can down the road until we cross a lot of lines in the sand and even some chiseled in granite and until we pump it dry and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs and have to give up on finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and run out of silver bullets and reach the worst case scenario when we will finally be able to tell which came first – the chicken or the egg – and whether the glass is half-empty or half full and be able to tell exactly where in the pile of details the devil is hiding and we may have to go where angels fear to tread and some outfits are not too big to fail and we cannot see the forest for the trees and all work and no play makes jack and the darkest hour is before the dawn and we can’t tell whether it is a light at the end of the tunnel or an oncoming locomotive and if we have one eye one ear and one brain we had better take a listen and take a think and oil and water don’t mix and time wounds all heals and mother knows best and where is Robin Hood when we really need him and birds of a feather flock together and you can’t tell a book by its cover and you know God loves poor people because he made so many of them and if we do not hang together we will hang separately and there are people who think outside the box and not all that glitters is gold and the tail wags the dog and it’s my way or the highway and I couldn’t agree with you more.

Trickle-down leaves a lot of boats high and dry and even with lipstick it’s still a pig and in all that pile there must be a pony somewhere and some of my best friends are livers and she’s out of estrogen and she’s got a gun and we must keep our eye on the ball and our ear to the ground, our finger on the pulse, our feet on the level, our nose to the grindstone, our powder dry, our bowels open, our minds clear and Viagra doesn’t fix everything.

Hope springs eternal and sometimes prune juice just isn’t enough and a friend in need is a friend indeed and you can’t unring a bell and on the table is much better than under the table and it’s tough titty but we really need the milk and when all is said and done, more will be said than done.

I feel I have to take some responsibility for this because I encouraged him. You could say I reaped what I sowed and if my shoe fits, I should wear it.